J.D. "Sandy" McClatchy (1945-) is an American poet, literary critic, professor of English literature at Yale University, and editor of the Yale Review

McClatchy is a deft practitioner of a highly literate formal verse, a master of the resonant detail: "three lines erased in the address book." A daring and unsettling collection, this book contains both "Fog Tropes," a subtle, moving poem about a dying friend, and "Kilim," an improbably successful crown of sonnets about a Middle Eastern terrorist. McClatchy seems tempted to elaborate everything, and a wonderfully ornate musicality ("a foxglove's comb of honeyed canticles") sometimes overpowers. But sharp images (a three-legged cat as "a petition against grace") and wit (Ravel and Stravinsky speaking respectively in flowing sentences and edgy, broken phrases) serve as a tonic. A richly textured and rewarding book by a remarkably accomplished poet.